Progress in Spaaace

14May

Back in Eve now for the last week and resuming my WH colonization plans. For an EASK like me, if you have a goal, Eve can be a veritable candy store of achievement. The irony being that in a “sandbox” game without explicit goals and with time-based skill progression, I’m getting dozens of minidings evidencing my progression.

The sense of progression and achievement in pursuit off a goal is addictive. Of course, its not just skilling up and that delicious “Skill Training Complete” audio cue. Having formulated a plan for WH exploration/colonization means about a million other things need to be thought about, analyzed, deconstructed, rationalized and put into some kind of structured action plan.

A quick example. The WH project means I need a POS. Like all things Eve, setting up a POS requires isk, skills and a plan. What kind of tower, what kind of defences, what kind of modules, how to arrange them, how much fuel, what skills are required to set it up and of course how to haul it all from a staging point into a wormhole and set up before someone pops you.

Over the course of the last week, I’ve managed to collect all the pieces for my desired POS. Knocking off each one is a miniding. While running to and fro, I’ve been working up all the necessary skills to anchor the modules, control the defences, mine and refine ore thats not commonly found in hi sec space, etc. All the while engaging in some other isk productive activity. At this point, I’m down to collecting fuel, ammo and supplies (which includes ships and WH appropriate fits– another area to research).

And of course, there are spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are not bad. Analytical problem solving is not bad. As a matter of fact, that’s probably the most satisfying part of getting back to Eve. And unlike most other MMOs, there isn’t really one best way to do anything which means creative problem solving can be rewarded. Brute force, cleverness or guile can all be effective solutions to problems.

For the task at hand, I’m wrestling with getting all the POS kit into digestible bites for quick but safe deployment. My gut says, don’t drive the Orca into the WH until the tower is up. On the other hand, I could carry so much more in one trip… But the cargo to mass ratio is lousy compared to disposable industrials….

Finally, the other sense of “progress” that I’ve been getting is honest to god real skill. Scanning down WHs and other sites can be a bit of an art form and I’m beginning to get more efficient which is a good feeling. I spent some time scanning down a grav site in a high sec system that was all but impossible to get to 100% scan strength even with skills at all IVs. A good feeling to get it locked down and to pull out a small but satisfying amount of Hemorphite.

Likewise, I found a WH to a populated class 2 system. Very interesting to see their set up and to play covert ops cat and mouse while I scanned down their POS and took a peek. More experience needed here.